I've missed more than a few day's worth of entries. It's almost a trend. Anyway, here's a short one on something that the web does best: the Dark Side of the Rainbow. DSOTR has been around for quite a while. It's a fun amalgam of pop, folk, and psychedelia. The idea is you play Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album (or CD) to the first 40 minutes or so of the Wizard of Oz. I remember synching up The Ten Commandments with Jesus Christ Superstar in my misspent youth. Nothing much came of it, but it was a fun way to kill a few hours. Sometimes the commercials seemed more in synch with the rock opera than the movie starring our favorite NRA president.
Speechless and chastened. [via Chicken or Beef?] The inventor of the B-Stik responded in a comment on the This Woman's Work blog.
The Société Jersiaise of the Channel Islands has some pages detailing the Jersey Norman French language. Less than 5% of the populations of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark still speak the local patois, but now the governments of these Crown Dependencies are starting to teach it in the local schools.
Capitain Daradiridatumtarides Windbrecher von Tausend Mord. Don Diego ruecket uns den Mantel zurechte / Don Cacciadiavolo, Jch halte / daß das Ostliche Theil des Bartes mit der West Seiten nicht allzuwol ueberein komme.
Don Cacciadiavolo. Großmaechtigster Hr. Capiten, es ist kein Wunder! die Haare der lincken Seiten sind etwas versenget von den Blitzen seiner Feurschiessenden Augen.
Darad. Blitz / Feuer / Schwefel / Donner / Salpeter / Bley und etliche viel Millionen Tonnen Pulver sind nicht so maechtig / als die wenigste reflexion, die ich mir ueber die reverberation meines Ungluecks mache. Der grosse Chach Sesi von Persen erzittert / wenn ich auff die Erden trete. Der Tuerckische Kaiser hat mir etlich mahl durch Gesandten eine Offerte von seiner Kron gethan. Der weitberuehmte Mogul schaetzt seine retrenchemente nicht sicher fuer mir. Africa hab ich vorlaengst meinen Cameraden zur Beute gegeben. Die Printzen in Europa, die etwas mehr courtese halten Freundschafft mit mir / mehr aus Furcht / als wahrer affection. Und der kleine verleckerte Bernhaeuter der Rappschnabel / Ce bugre, Ce larron, Ce menteur, Ce fils de Putain, Ce traistre, ce faqvin, ce brutal, Ce bourreau, Ce Cupido, darff sich unterstehen seine Schuch an meinen Lorberkraentzen abzuwischen! Ha Ma Deesse! merville de monde adorable beauté! Unueberwindliche Schoene! unvergleichliche Selene! wie lange wolt ihr mich in der Courtegarde eurer Ungunst verarrestiret halten?
Don Diego. Signor mio illustrissimo! Mich wundert nicht wenig / daß ihr das Bollwerck von Selene noch nicht habt miniren koennen. Die Damosellen dieses Landes erschrecken / wenn sie euch von Spiessen / Schlachten / Koepff abhauen / Staedte anzuenden und dergleichen discuriren hoeren. Sie meinen / daß ihr todos los Diabolos in der Vorbruch / wie die Schweitzer in dem Hosenlatz / traget. Mich duenckt Palladius richte mit seiner anmuthigen Courtesi weit mehr aus / als wir mit allen unsern Rodomontaden.
[Andreas Gryphius. 1663. Horribilicribrifax Teutsch, I.i.]
An interesting question, therefore, is: why do [British pop] singers modify their pronunciation in this way? One theory that attempts to deal with language modification of this kind is the socio-psychological accommodation theory of [Howard] Giles. This, briefly, attempts to explain temporary or long-term adjustments in pronunciation and other aspects of linguistic behaviour in terms of a drive to approximate one's language to that of one's interlocutors, if they are regarded as socially desirable and/or if the speaker wishes to identify with them and/or demonstrate good will towards them. This may often take the form of reducing the frequency of socially stigmatized linguistic forms in the presence of speakers of higher prestige varieties. The theory also allows for the opposite effect: the distancing of one's language from that of speakers one wishes to disassociate oneself from, in order to assert one's own identity.
Accommodation theory does go some way towards accounting for the phenomenon of pop-song pronuciation. It is clearly not sufficient, however, since it applies only to conversational situations. And we cannot assume that pop musicians adjust their pronunciation in order to make it resemble more closely that of their intended audience, since what actually happens is in many respects the reverse.
Another, less elaborate way to look at this problem is simply to discuss it in terms of sociolinguistic notion of 'appropriateness'. As is well known, different situations, different topics, different genres require different linguistic styles and registers. The singing of pop music in this way, it could be argued, is no different from vicars preaching in the reigster appropriate to Church of England sermons, or BBC newsreaders employing the variety appropriate for the reading of the news. Certainly 'appropriateness' is obviously a relevant factor here. But, equally obviously, it is not on its own enough to provide an explanation for why it is this type of singing which is regulated in this way, nor why it is characterized by this particular set of pronunciation rules and tendencies rather than some other.
[Peter Trudgill, "Acts of conflcting identity: the sociolinguistics of British pop-song pronunciation" in On Dialect: Social and Geographical Perspectives, p. 143f.]
On seeing Soderbergh's Solaris, based as he said not on the Tarkovsky film but on the Stanslaw Lem novel, I remembered this passage:
For some reason in all the science-fiction films which I have ever seen, the audience is forced into a detailed, close-up examination of what the future will look like. Indeed, often (like Stanley Kubrick) they call their films "visions of the future" … I would like to film Solaris in such a way that the audiences are not faced with something technologically outlandish.
If, for instance, we were to film passengers getting into a tram as something never before seen or even heard of, then it would look like Kubrick's moon-landing sequence. But if we film a moon-landing the way they film a tram-stop in an ordinary film, then everything will be as we would wish it.
[Maya Turovskaya Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry, p. 59]
I've always been a big fan of Macaronic poetry. Inaugurated by Tifi Odasi (Typhis Odaxius) in his Macaronea and perfected by Merlinus Coccaius (né Teofilo Folengo, 1496-1544) in his sublime mock-heroic Baldus. Written in Latin hexameters, the poet would then mix in latinized words from his native language. Although, the term macaronic stems from the early 16th century, the tendency to mix languages in poetry has been around at least as early as Ausonius. Here's a late 16th century German example:
Angla floosque canam, qui Wassunt pulvere svvarto,
Ex watroque simul stoitenti et blaside dicko,
Multipedes deiri qui possunt huppere longe,
Non aliter quam si flöglos natura dedisset.
Illis sunt equidem, sunt inquam corpora kleina,
Sed mille erregunt menschis matrasque plagasque,
Cum steckunt snaflum in livum blautumque rubentem
Exsugant; homines sic, sic vexeirere possunt!
Ex quæ tandem illis pro tantalonia restant
Vexeritate, et quem nemant pro vulnera lodum![Flöia, cortum versicale, de flöis schwartibus, illis deiriculis, quæ omnes fere Minschos, Mannos, Vveibras, Iungfras, &c., behuppere, et spitzibus suis schnaflis steckere et bitere solunt, authore. Gripholdo Knickknackio ex Floilandia. Anno 1593.]
[via Carl Blümlein Die Floia und andere maccaronische Gedichte, 1900]
The Discouraging Word [no permalinks, look for the 21 August entry] has a good entry on a slight tremor in the farce vis-a-vis the apostrophe, its history, and (ab)usage. There's even an Apostrophe Preservation Society in Boston, England, fighting the good fight. I simply love it that the apostrophe was originally a sign of a dropped e in both the nominative plural and the possessive singular before becoming associated with the possessive only. Oh, and beware the insidous greengrocer's apostrophe. I have seen this creature in the wild, and its appearance signals madness.
[Addendum 08/22/03: Languagehat, as always, has some eloquent opinions in his entry on this topic.]
So, it seems that GOP candidates have discovered the pleasures of learning a foreign language according to an article in the Christian Science Monitor. Though, I'd like to think that these guys are just expanding their horizons, it turns out that it's all a pragmatic issue: Hispanics are now the States' largest minority.
But for Republicans, language lessons seem especially important, as the ability to tap growing minority groups goes to the very future of their party.
"The Republican Party has been pretty homogeneous and white for a long time, and they are realizing that they are going to have to adapt to changing circumstances to stay in power," says F. Chris Garcia, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico.
[via Blogalization]
I've used the vocabula computatralia list of English-Latin computer terminology before when I worked on a website that had some rollovers in Latin and English. It was fun. It's hosted by a University of Warsaw classics department website. If you go up a level or two in the URL, you can find some other documents in Latin.
I'm still waiting on the Sanskrit translation of The Man Who Was Thursday, but this will just have to do. A Latin translation of the first of the Harry Potter books: Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis. I had leafed through Winnie Ille Pooh when it came out, but I'm sure this one will sell more copies.
Dominus et Domina Dursley, qui vivebant in aedibus Gestationis Ligustrorum numero quattuor signatis, non sine superbia dicebant se ordinaria vivendi uti neque se paenitere illius rationis.
[via mirabilis dot ca via Pete Bevin dot com]
[Addendum 08/20/03: There are also two Dr Seuss books that have been translated into Latin: Cattus Petasatus &mdash thanks Des &mdash and Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit. And, for those who are on a tight budget, Perseus has digitized a biography of George Washington, Vita Washingtonii written in 1836 in Latin. Later that same day: another couple of books in Latin: Ferdinandus Taurus, Arbor Alma, and Regulus. Thanks to Ben at Waste.]
A twenty-year-old, Republican web designer is being sued by a former senator of South Dakota, Jim Abourezk, who also founded the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. The web designer in question, Ben Marino, runs a website called ProBush dot com, amongst the pages of which is one with a long list of traitors. What is Marino's definition? If you do not support our President's decisions you are a traitor.
There is a disclaimer on the page, but Abourezk's attorney says that isn't enough. His client has been defamed. I was more concerned that the young man learn how to use the <img> tag so that his "traitors" all didn't look too fat or thin. If it's on purpose, maybe he needs another disclaimer. [via Beerzie Boy via Doughertyland]
Read an article, by George Thomspon, called "Soma and Ecstasy in the Rgveda," in the current Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, and one sentence sent me to the dictionaries. "As for [hymn] 10.119 itself, Falk's argument against its depicting visionary or ecstatic experience is based on the claim that the hymn describes the experience of Indra, or at least of Indra in the guise of a bird [labá], probably a lapwing — rather than the experience of a human being who is 'in the intoxication of Soma' [cf. sómasya of the hymn's refrain in light of the formula sómasya máde, as well as its variants]." Does the Sanskrit word laba mean lapwing or quail as Monier-Williams' suggests. Well, a long story short, lapwing in German is Kiebitz which may be of the origin of the Yiddish verb kibetsn which gives us to kibbitz. On the assumption that the word is onomatopoeic and that kibbitzing meant something like making the sound pewit as the lapwing does in English. Though, Kluge's listed a verb kiebitschen 'visitieren' and traced it to Rotwelsch instead of Jiddisch. And that took me to a wonderful German conceptual language-art website. I had also misremembered the opening lines of Nabokov's Pale Fire as having to do with a lapwing instead of a waxwing (being unfamiliar with both birds, though the lapwing seems similar to the killdeer) &mdash shame on me. The French call the lapwing colloquially dix-huit and formally vanneau huppé which first word is related to the genera name Vannellus and which second word has something to do with the Latin upupa 'hoopoe' which is another bird altogether.
The BBC has a styleguide, as it should. Although, strange as it may seem, the word styleguide itself doesn't seem to have an entry in either the American Heritage or the Merriam-Webster dictionaries. The OED gives style-book and cites its use in the US in 1911. Styleguide seems to be a minor variant of style guide. The former gets 86.6 thousand hits in Google, while the latter gets 1.36 million. The style guide itself is what you'd expect, but here's a few things that caught my eye:
[via Colin at Blogalization via Netlex]
Is diplomacy a kind of public relations? If you read John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton's new book, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq, that's what you'd conclude. Jeffrey St. Clair, one of the editors over at CounterPunch wrote a review of the new book called: "War Pimps." Here's a taste:
To peddle the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell and company recruited public relations gurus into top-level jobs at the Pentagon and the State Department. These spin meisters soon had more say over how the rationale for war on Iraq should be presented than intelligence agencies and career diplomats. If the intelligence didn't fit the script, it was either shaded, retooled or junked.
Take Charlotte Beers who Powell tapped as Undersecretary of State in the post-9/11 world. Beers wasn't a diplomat. She wasn't even a politician. She was the grand diva of spin, known on the business and gossip pages as "the queen of Madison Avenue." On the strength of two advertising campaigns, one for Uncle Ben's Rice and another for Head and Shoulder's dandruff shampoo, Beers rocketed to the top of the heap in the PR world, heading two giant PR houses Ogilvey and Mathers as well as J. Walter Thompson.
Stauber and Rampton run a website called PR Watch. Reading the review, I ran across an interesting word: claque. A claque is a group of people hired to clap at a show. Well, the ancient Romans hired professional mourners to wail at their funerary rites.
I watched Punch-Drunk Love last night on DVD, and was reminded by the name of the production company in the credits that P. T. Anderson was the son of the famous Clevland late-night horror show host, Ghoulardi, whose fans range from Michael Weldon, of Psychotronic Video magazine fame, to Drew Carey. The closest I ever got to Ghoulardi was being in Cleveland once. This got me to wondering about Bob Wilkins who hosted a show on local TV here in the San Francisco bay area called Creature Features. He was on the air for eight years starting in 1971, entertaining us kids with his sarcasm and his large cigar. John Stanley took over after him, and made it into the '80s. Later, Bob showed up as the local TV weatherman and a kids show host called Captain Cosmic. I bumped into him backstage at a science fiction convention in the early '80s and told him how much I'd enjoyed his show, but since others, like George Lucas, had said similar, I don't think it impressed him. I still recall fondly the first movie he showed way back when, The Horror of Party Beach.
After the media had picked up the story of some language policy fiddling in Bristol City, I headed over to the BC website to see if they had anything to say about it. They did, but not much. [via the Language Policy List via The New York Times (free registration required)]
I came across a nice list of German parallel linguistic terms the other day. Parallel in the sense that words of foreign origin, like Verb, are listed in one column, and are paired with native words, like Zeitwort, in the other column. It's called the Komependium deutscher Grammatikbegriffe (Compendium of German grammatical concepts), and it's worth a look-see. I'm not sure why nichtzielendes Verb is paired with intransitives Verb (at 31), while zielendes Zeitwort with transitives Verb (at 88), but it's probably just a typo.
I was looking for a picture of Otto Jespersen, the Danish linguist, when I came across a website for Otto Jespersen, the Norwegean comedian. I'm probably the last person in Blogovia to hear about his "controversial" US flag burning on TV back in February, and I was shocked and awed to read that he might be fined for it, but it seems the police decided to let him off with some choice publicity. I hear he also said something that upset the Crown Princess Mette-Marit's father Sven O. Hoeiby. (Better not let Desbladet hear about this, though somehow I'm sure he has.)
By way of Margaret of Transblawg comes mention of a truly Teutonic society for irregular verbs (Gesellschaft zur Stärkung der Verben). German grammar distinguishes between two broad classes of verbs: strong (or irregular / ablauting) and weak (or regular). I'd mentioned them in passing in my entry on preterit-present verbs. We have these classes in English, too. Strong verbs, like sing, have grammatical forms that differ by vowel gradation: sing, sang, sung. Weak verbs, like love, use suffixation: love, loved, loved, for the corresponding forms. Though, strong verbs are irregular today, they developed from a regular process that became irregular through phonological and analogical change. In fact, other Indo-European language groups have remnants of the same processes. For example, Latin capio 'I seize', cepi 'I seized', Greek leipo 'I leave', elipon 'I left'. Some dialects of spoken English are even trying to turn some weak verbs into strong ones: e.g., dive, *dove instead of dived, or bring, *brang, *brung instead of brought. English has examples of weak verbs being strengthened: e.g., dive, dived alternating with dove. My question is when did Germans start calling Zeitwörter, Verben?
I've just started reading Language Rights and Political Theory, and footnote 26 on page 23 got me to type the name Hermann Josef Goerres into a search engine. Amongst the results was the text of this judgment against him. What had he done to become linguistically footnoteworthy?
5. Mr [Hermann Josef] Goerres runs a food market in Eschweiler, near Aachen. On 13 January 1995, he offered products for sale in his shop which were not labelled in German but only in French, Italian or English. The products in question included: 'Fanta orange, soda au jus d'orange' (labelled in French), 'Corn Flakes' (labelled in Italian and French), 'I Pelati di San Marzano — il Vero Gusto del Pomodoro' (labelled in Italian), and 'Pasta sauce with olives and capers' (labelled in English).
OK. Germany has some pretty strict rules about the labeling and presentation of foodstuffs sold within its borders. Many countries do. And, so:
6. On 6 July 1995, the Oberkreisdirektor imposed an administrative penalty of DM 2 000 on Mr Goerres for infringement of Paragraph 3(3) of the LMKV [Verordnung über die Kennzeichnung von Lebensmitteln (Regulations of the labelling of foodstuffs)].
But, what was his defense?
7. Mr Goerres lodged an objection to the penalty notice before the Amtsgericht Aachen. Relying on a legal opinion from the University of Hamburg (Professor Dr Meinhard Hilf) of 14 July 1994, he submitted that the use of a particular language could not be imposed; that, under Article 14 of the directive [Council Directive 79/112/EEC of 18 december 1978], the decisive factor was the intelligibility of the labelling; and that, in the case of products which were well known to the public, the use of labelling in a foreign language did not adversely affect the consumer's interest in receiving information. He further stated that he had placed in his shop, adjacent to the products in question, supplementary signs giving the required information in German.
In the end, Mr Goerres lost his case, but it should be noted that "The costs incurred by the Belgian, French, Austrian and Swedish Governments and by the Commission of the European Communities, which have submitted observations to the Court, are not recoverable. Since these proceedings are, for the parties to the main proceedings, a step in the action pending before the national court, the decision on costs is a matter for that court."
[Addendum 08/13/03: I'd forgotten, until I read this entry this morning, that I'd got the name of the language policy book from Scott M. at Pedantry. He had mentioned it in an earlier posting, and we both received the book about the same time. I'm looking forward to his review]
Kerim Friedman has a well-linked post to some linguistic lobbying in the Sunshine state. [via the Language Policy list]
François Nonnenmacher has posted an entry on his blog, Padawan dot info, responding to accusations of high treason for blogging in English rather than his native French. Where stands his accuser? Karl Dubost. There's more than just gross numbers involved here, for as most would admit, English speakers outnumber French speakers. So how can Karl seriously suggest that writing in English somehow marginalizes what François has to say? It seems his duty is to his co-speakers of French first, and the rest of his (mostly) English-speaking techie readership second. If your French is up to it, you ought to take a gander and decide for yourselves. La Grande Rousse offers her opinion, too. It's a matter of concession to a vaster readership over ease of expression in ones native tongue. It also seems to me that François gains a larger audience of non-native English readers than he would non-native French ones.
You say virgule; I say solidus. M. Fabius Quintillianus scripsit: "At illa connexa series tres habet formas: incisa quæ kommata dicuntur, membra quæ kolon, periodon, quæ vel ambitus, vel circumductus vel continuatio vel conclusio. In omni porro compositione tria sunt genera necessaria: ordo, iunctura, numerus." [Institutio oratoria IX.4.22] Albert H. Marckwardt wrote: "Punctuation is in large part a system of conventions the function of which is to assist the written language in indicating those elements of speech which cannot be conveniently set down on paper: chiefly pause, pitch, and stress." [A Short Introduction to English Grammar. 1942. Quoted by Geoffrey Nunberg. The Linguistics of Punctuation. 1990. p.11] The Romans had barely gotten used to spaces, to replace those middle dots (i.e., ·), before the Empire ground to a halt. The Unicode Specification 3.0 has an entire chapter on punctuation. I love all the strange names folks have come up with over the years to name punctuation marks and other glyphs: bang, octothorpe, and, of course, asterisk and obelisk (i.e., * & †).
Translation: Quintillian wrote: "But the more closely welded style is composed of three elements: the comma, or as we call it incisum, the colon, or in Latin membrum, and the period, which Roman writers call ambitus, circumductus, continuatio or conclusio."
Some commentary over at Languagehat got me to pondering about English modal verbs. As with anything to do with language, things are a lot more complicated than you first imagine. First off, what are modals? As Steve explained, they are a class of verbs in English that are grammatically different from the other verbs. How so? Well, they don't take an -s in the 3rd person singular present indicative; no present participles in -ing; no infinitival form with to. Huh? Verbs like fear or loathe, have those forms: e.g., to fear is the infinitive, he fears is the pres. ind. 3PS, and fearing is pr. part. Modal auxiliaries, e.g., can, must, shall, don't. You can't say *he shalls.
Interesting, in and of itself, but if we take a peek back in history to Old English (AKA Anglo-Saxon) it gets even more so. It turns out that most of the modal auxiliaries developed from a class of verbs that are known as preterit-present (AKA preteritive present) verbs in Indo-European linguistics. These verbs — there are twelve in Old English — though they have forms that are in the past tense (the preterit) have present meanings. Take one of the OE verbs that became a Present Day English modal, can. In OE, its infinitive form was cunnan 'to know'. You could say ic can 'I know', hé can 'he knows', wé cunnon 'we know'. These preterit-present verbs formed their past tense in the same way as the strong verbs. Strong verbs are sometimes called ablauting verbs because different grammatical forms have different vowels, e.g., sing, sang, sung in PDE.
So, now for the second interesting bit about preterit-present verbs in OE: because they were preterit in form, but present in meaning, they developed a preterit form that was along the lines of the weak verbs. Weak verbs in English mark different forms by suffixation rather than ablaut (i.e., vowel gradation): e.g., to loathe, he loathes, he loathed. So, the past tense of can is could. You'll have to take my word that these developed from an analagous, weak past tense form, even though the vowel has change in the 1000 years or so since OE.
Here's a table of the OE preterit-present verbs (infinite), their meanings, 1/3PS form, past form, PDE present and past forms.
| ágan | possess | ág | áhte | owe | ought |
| cunnan | know | can | cúðe | can | could |
| dugan | avail | déah | dohte | dow | |
| durran | dare | dear | dorste | dare | durst |
| magan | may, be able | mæg | meahte | may | might |
| mótan | may | mót | móste | mote | must |
| munan | be mindful of | man | munde | mun | |
| (be-, ge-)nugan | suffice | neah | nohte | ||
| sculan | shall | sceal | sceolde | shall | should |
| ðurfan | need | ðearf | ðorfte | ||
| unnan | grant | an | úðe | ||
| witan | know | wat | wi(e)ste | wit | wot |
Cf. genugan with German genüg 'enough'. Another PDE modal verb is will (cf. shall) which was not one of the original OE preterit-present verbs. Owe and wit are regular verbs in PDE. Dow, mote, and mun are archaic or dialectal according to the OED.
Over at Ouvert 24 heures - Verres stérilisés, Michel Dumais posts an interesting entry on using blogrolls as a measure of the level confidence one can give to blogged content. He sees a blogroll as a circle of confidence, or, more properly, as expanding, concentric circles of diminishing confidence. One of your close blog buddies writes something astonishing, and you tend to believe it. Somebody out on the farther rings of confidence does likewise, and you tend to doubt it. This makes sense, but, in the end, just like with SSL certificates, it all depends on lineage, (i.e., who authorized you and yours). Also, the very nature of blogs specifically and the web in general is to link (quote, cite) to your sources, excepting, of course, professional journalists. Most of the unlinked, and therefore unverified and unverifiable, stories on blogs are of a personal nature. In other words, how do I really know you studied Latin, 40 years ago, with Albino Luciani? Most personal anecdotes are like stories and really don't need to be true to function. One of the comments also mentions FOAF (a Semantic Web ontology) which I've been seeing more and more and have been meaning to read up on. [via la Grande Rousse who has her own thoughts on blogroll credibility.]
I've been reading a computational linguistics book with the unlikely title, Time Warps, String Edits, and Macromolecules: The Theory and Practice of Sequence Comparison which is a CSLI reprint of a "young classic" originally printed in 1983. And it lead me directly to Professor Heeringa's Rijksuniversiteit Gronigen website where he has a goodly colleciton of his papers on Dutch dialectology and other fun stuff. Most of the papers have to do with calculating Levenshtein (or edit) distances between words in different dialects to come up with dialect atlases that use a different criterion than the standard isoglosses to separate groups of dialects from one another. I also see that Dr Heeringa has added the Russian Plautdeutsch dialects into the mix. [For more info on these Low German dialects, see the interesting Pedantry entry, via Languagehat.]
It all started with something that Dorothea Salo wrote over at Caveat Lector. Shortly before removing her blogroll, she wondered out loud about the locutionary force of a link, and then, snip. For those not up on speech act theory, one can distinguish between three different kinds of meaning in an utterance: locutionary (or the literal meaning), illocutionary (or the utter's intended meaning), perlocutionary (or the hearer's interpretated meaning). For example, if I enter a room and say: "Boy, it's hot in here." (Utterance.) Is it a simple statement about the temperature in the room? Is that what I meant? (Locutionary.) Or was I just trying to get somebody to open a window. (Illocutionary.) One of my audience could take it as a sign that I want them to leave. (Perlocutionary.) And do so. Is a blogroll an indicator of which blogs you find note- or praiseworthy, or a simple list (in lieu of aggregator software) of the blogs you read on a regular basis? When you remove a link from your blogroll does it mean you disapprove of the blog in question, or have you simply tired of reading it, or something else? How about blogs that have lain dormant or been abandoned? How long do you give them, before erasing them?
That was over the weekend, and then yesterday, wandering around, I came across a posting by Dave Winer about the relative cheapness of links. Of course, he mainly was writing about listing ones references: the blogger equivalent of a bibliographical reference. Some blogs simply aggregate links to interesting texts, and others link and annotate or comment. What is the meaning of the reconstructed search engine queries that you find in your referer logs and sometimes publish in an entry? With or without rhetorical questions appended. But, just because we can link should we? I've stopped short of writing critiques about sundry hate sites I may have run across for two reasons: one, the fear of some medieval revenge the owners may take on me, and the other, a reluctance to advertise their loathsome sites.
Well, the 15th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style is out. There's a nice article in the NY Times [free registration required] about it. But something caught my eye:
It also has the manual's first chapter on grammar and usage, written by Bryan A. Garner, with instructions on whether it is all right to use "and" and "but" at the beginning of a sentence. "And" has been O.K. since Chaucer's time, Mr. Garner said.
"The shibboleth persists that it isn't," he said. But the great grammarian H. W. Fowler, author of Modern English Usage, called it "a monstrous doctrine," he said. Mr. Garner, himself the author of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, did a study on the issue. "Ten percent of sentences in first-rate writing begin with 'and' or 'but,' " he said.
Way to go, Henry. It's a pity that Ms Anita Samen's suggestion that en dashes be dropped was overruled.
[via Taccuino di Traduzione]
Well, there was the time I nearly drowned in the high school swimming pool under the watchful eye of one of the PE coaches. Since then, I've been wary of large bodies of water. And there was that cut-away view of a WW1 U-boot in the Deutsches Museum in München that helped to nip any ideas about joining the navy to see the world in the bud. A quick spin round the web revealed the superb Uboat dot net site. A while back, I'd bookmarked an interesting Pacific Wrecks Database site.
Miladus ad Usum Delphinorum has brought my attention to an interesting interview in Figaro Magazine with an actual living, breathing French Academician, Professor Marc Fumaroli. Besides being a blurb for his latest book on Chateaubriand, it sums up French sentiments about their not being world leaders, culturally, anymore. There is also, perhaps more seriously, his observation that the French have lost their love of joy, particularly their joy of conversation.
Je montre le décalage entre la France d'avant 1789 et la France d'après, celle du triste XIXe siècle, né avec la Révolution française. Ce qui n'a pas empêché un effort merveilleux à Paris pour restaurer ce qui pouvait l'être. Marcel Proust se moque des salons et de la vie de société, mais il y a trouvé un élément relativement nutritif. Malgré tout, les salons du début du XXe siècle n'ont plus rien à voir avec ceux du XVIIIe. Il y a un mot de Tocqueville que je trouve merveilleux pour caractériser l'Ancien Régime et que je cite souvent : "Les Français aimaient la joie." Une des causes de leur décadence est peut-être d'avoir cessé d'aimer cette joie!
[Marc Fumaroli. "Les Français ont perdu la joie."]
Miladus' entry quotes another of the professor's bons mots: "On ne sait même pas qui [Shakespeare] était, ni de quelle manière il vivait. La conversation chez Shakespeare, c'est le dialogue tragique, comique ou pastoral." This not knowing anything about a famous author bothering folks is what is at the heart of the whole Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare movement. One doesn't know anything about Rabelais, the person, and, yet, that doesn't stop us from reveling in his works. It is interesting that the first literary criticism of Shakespeare by Thomas Rymer was a scathing review of his failures as a playwright along French classical lines. It is sad about the French losing their joy, but perhaps some young filmmaker can remake How Stella Got Her Groove Back à la française.
Translation:
I show the shift between pre-1789 and post-1789 France, that of the sad 19th century, born of the French revolution. This which did not prevent a marvellous effort in Paris to restore what it could. Marcel Proust makes fun of the salons and society life, but he found there a relatively nourishing element. Despite everything, the salons at the beginning of the 20th century do not have anything anymore to do with those of 18th. There is a saying of Tocqueville's that I find marvellous in its characterization of the Ancien Régime, and which I often quote: "The French loved joy." One of the causes of their decline is perhaps they have ceased loving this joy!
[Marc Fumaroli. "The French Have Lost Their Joy."]
"One does not even know who [Shakespeare] was, nor how he lived. Conversation in Shakespeare is tragic, comic, or pastoral dialog."
Professors Alexander Lubotsky and Robert Beekes at the University of Leiden are busy digitizing a boat-load of Indo-European dictionaries, including Pokorny's Indogermanisches etymologisches Woerterbuch, Vasmer's Etimologicheskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, etc. Though the UI takes some getting used to, you can't deny they've digitized a lot of useful data. [via T. Majláth's great links page via Google]
If you've ever wondered what Roman writing looked like, then you should hie yourself over to the Vindolanda Tablets Online website. I visted the Vindolanda archaeological site in northern England back in '76 before there was much at the site but building foundations and archaeologists digging. It had been a Roman camp on Hadrian's Wall. The most important find at the site was a bunch of wooden tablets with cursive writing on them, letters mainly. In Britannia, where papyrus was expensive, the local Roman soldiers made due with wafer-thin sheets of wood. One of my favorites is a letter that mentions a shipment of oysters received by the letter writer.
quod est principium epistulae meae te fortem esse a Cordonouis amicus missit mihi ostria quinquaginta quo uelocius.
which is the principal reason for my letter (to express the wish?) that you are vigorous. A friend sent me fifty oysters from Cordonovi.
I see that this is just part of a larger effort to put more classical epigraphic materials online. It's also great that some of the Oxyrhynchus papyri are online now, too.
What do James Joyce, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and George W. Bush have in common? According to this article a way with words, either intentionally or not, either complicatedly or not. I did cringe at the misapplied apostrophe in Finnegans Wake which probably crept on in over the border from Arno Schmidt's Zettel's Traum. [via my fave musical dreadnought Dr Wold]
Just now, I was googling around the web in search of the Latin adjectival form for the city of Cairo, when I dropped in on the New Tradition website. So, what had Garry Kasparov been up to after losing to IBM's Deep Blue chess program? Obviously, lending his good name to the efforts of A. T. Fomenko (1945- ), Russian mathematician, who has proved that written history is only about 1000 years old. He had some help from N. A. Morozov (1854-1946), who had proved that written history only went back to 300 CE. I have to admit I was a little shocked to discover such a rich vein of academic psychoceramics of which I was totally unaware. The New Traditions website is hosted by Vladimir Melamed who runs Lencom Software, Inc. which sells email marketing software.
There's plenty of information around the web concerning Fomenko, Morozov, and company. Here's a choice example:
The number of inconsistencies and errors in the book is unbelievable.
Let me remind you that according to Fomenko everything in the world
history is eventually mapped to medieval Italy. He even takes great
pains to prove that the Bible actually describes Italian events
of X - XIII centuries. Fomenko undertakes some linguistic analysis
to show that Hebrew word 'Mitzraim' which is usually associated with
Egypt stands in fact for Rome, Sinai is Mt. Vesuvius, etc. His exercises
in linguistics are not just weak - they're ludicrous because this
esteemed scholar is apparently unaware of the basics of the discipline
that he is boldly calling for help.…
Fomenko is a decent mathematician though. I think that either the book is
a hoax and he's secretly laughing over the people who take it seriously,
or we just witness a peculiar case of dementia which affects only
the part of brain responsible for logical reasoning.[Vitaly Shmatikov on soc.culture.soviet]
I ran across the assumption more than once online — usually from Fomenko's compatriots — that he was writing a satire of sorts. You can judge for yourself. Here's one of his articles in English at the University of Omsk.
Dynastic stream of English kings from 640 to 1040 A.D.
(400-year period) is a duplicate (reflection) of Byzantine
dynastic stream from 378 to 830 A.D. (452-year period). These two
dynastic streams coincide after 210-year chronological shift.…
Even if the vowels of common words are not that important
(you can easily reconstruct a well-known word from the context),
the situation changes completely when combination of consonants
meaning a city, country, the name of a king, etc., appears in an
ancient text. Tens and hundreds of different variants of vowels
for one term (word) may be found, stating the "identifications"
of the biblical vowel-free names of cities, countries, and
others, made by traditional historians proceeding from the
chronological (and geographical) version of J.Scaliger and the
localization referring the biblical events to the Near East.…
Where was the land Britain which was conquered by Brutus located? In what direction his fleet cruised?
Ancient Troy located in medieval Italy; King Brutus of Britannia existed; Russia not an island. These are just some of the fantastic observations in the preceeding article. I am exhausted.
[Addendum 08/03/03: An interesting anti-Fomenko article: Who Lost the Middle Ages?.]
[Addendum 08/04/03: Mr Aitch over at Giornale Nuovo has an entry which reveals another side to the fascinating Fomenko: he's an artist.]
I was looking for something completely different when I came across this Gothic corpus website in Belgium. Not only do they have the complete Gothic language corpus of texts, e.g., Wulfila's 4th century translation of parts of the New Testament, and they also have Streitberg's Gotisches Elementarbuch online and as a PDF for download.
ni manna giutiþ wein juggata in balgins fairnjans; ibai aufto distairai wein þata niujo þans balgins, jah wein usgutniþ, jah þai balgeis fraqistnand; ak wein juggata in balgins niujans giutand.
And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles.
[Codex Argenteus, Mark. ii.22]